


Troubled in District Twelve

by AyYouFiction



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 04:26:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10403910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AyYouFiction/pseuds/AyYouFiction
Summary: Everyone knows about the Troubles in District Twelve, but people never talk about them.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I can't work on multiple multi-chapters at the same time, but I try to allow myself one-shots as a kind of "palate cleanser" (or would it be more like a pensieve where instead of clearing out memories, it clears out stories?)
> 
> The funny thing about this is that Seam Girls was like this, too, originally. A one-shot to clear out the mind.
> 
> I'm not sure I like the title. I may change it later if I think of something better. I hope everyone enjoys this little one-shot. Let me know what you think.
> 
> Disclaimer: I did not have a beta for this story so please continue with that in mind.  
> Additional Note: This is Everlark endgame.

_The last sack of rye needs to be hauled from the storage room to the kitchen. Have to remember to tell Mama that we need to order more_ , Peeta thinks to himself, but his mental notes are interrupted by Madge’s whimpers and moans growing louder above him. He cracks his eyes open to find her fondling her breasts as she rocks her hips on him.  
  
“My nipples, Peeta” Madge grunts her demand and Peeta obliges. His hands lift to her bouncing breasts and slides his thumbs back and forth across the erect pebbles. He doesn’t feel the weight of them in his palms or the texture of her skin. He can’t even feel her riding his cock.  
  
That’s his curse. His Trouble.  
  
Everyone in their district knows about the Troubles of District Twelve, but no one ever talks about them. No one knows why some families are cursed and some aren’t. All they know is that they’re passed from parent to child, only one Trouble can manifest, but others can be passed along, quietly, unknowingly. And worst of all, for most it starts at six years old and plagues the person for the rest of their life.  
  
That’s how it was for him. Ten years ago, on his sixth birthday, he was playing with his brothers and he fell from the old apple tree in their backyard.  Peeta immediately pulled himself back up and was ready to rejoin his brothers when they stopped him. The horror in their faces confused him until he looked down to find his leg bent at an unnatural angle.  
  
He’d always known about the Troubles. His mother and both of his brothers were troubled where things would suddenly shoot across the room at top speed. Sometimes, when they were especially emotional, things would fly around in a spectacular and dangerous whirlwind. Because two sons had their mother’s Trouble, his family assumed he would too. What he got, though, was his father’s Trouble.  
  
“You’ve got to be extra careful, Peeta,” his father told him while tucking him into bed that night with his leg in a cast hanging outside of the blanket. “Do you understand?”  
  
“No Daddy. Why can’t I feel anything anymore?” he asked, running his fingers along the comforter but feeling nothing.  
  
“I’m sorry to say, you’ve got my Trouble, Peeta. We thought since your brothers got your mama’s Trouble, that you would too. I guess we were wrong.” His father’s eyes were mournful with more than a touch of guilt, but at that age, Peeta couldn’t really understand. All he knew was that he didn’t like it. He already missed the feel of his toes in the grasses or the simple softness of the worn sheets on his bed. Not to mention, there were new rules, so many new rules.  
  
“Don’t climb the apple tree anymore.”  
“Don’t wrestle with your brothers anymore.”  
“Don’t drink hot tea.”  
“Don’t eat your dinner until we say it’s cool enough.”  
  
The very next day, Peeta watched his father slide loaves of bread into one of the ovens with the meticulous care he’s always had and in his young mind, he thought maybe, just maybe it wasn’t real. It went against everything he’d been taught in his six years, but he willed himself to take each step closer to the oven and expected to feel the heat radiate off of it in waves like he’d always felt. He was so close to it that he raised his hands to touch the surface, but jumped away the moment his mother cried out his name.  
  
He couldn’t understand the fuss his mother was making, calling out for his father with tears streaming down her face, until he saw the blisters on the surface of his palms. He’d gotten closer to the ovens than he ever did before. They burned him and he didn’t feel it at all. Almost two months with this hands wrapped in bandages taught him to respect the new rules that came with his Trouble.  
  
Madge’s hips move faster and the rhythm’s grown more erratic. He knows she’s close. They’ve been doing this long enough to know her signs. Sure enough, not a second later, her back arches and she cries out, “Fuck, Peeta!” loud enough for everyone in the mayor’s home to hear. It’s a good thing the mayor and his wife are away, official business at that Capitol. He just watches numbly because he doesn’t know, will never know, what that kind of release feels like. He waits for her to fall to the side of him on her bed before he gets up and goes to the bathroom.  
  
There’s a dial just above the shower handle, presets for water temperature. Option one is set specifically for him at one hundred and five degrees. Madge talked her father into having it installed after their relationship hit the six month mark, after they started having sex on a regular basis. Not that her father knew this was the reason. Madge just asked for it as a birthday gift.  
  
He finishes his shower when his erection settles and leaves the bathroom with the towel wrapped around his hips and his wavy hair hanging low in loose, wet tendrils, Madge eyes him from her bed before returning her focus back to her cellphone. “Meet up again Saturday?”  
  
“Sure,” he mutters, dropping the towel and reaching for his pants. He doesn’t bother with underwear during their visits.  
  
Her eyes flit back over to his fully naked body, appreciating the stocky, muscular build that carrying heavy flour sacks all day will sculpt. Not that he has the same appreciation of her still naked form sprawled out on the bed.  
  
Madge is pretty and she has a body that most boys in school admire openly. He’s heard them comment on both when they thought he was out of earshot. She could’ve had her pick of any boy at school, but there was one thing standing in her way…her Trouble.  
  
It’s not easy to have a boyfriend when the mere graze of her skin can send someone’s nervous system into shock, making them think they’re being ripped apart. Not that there’s actual damage, but what does that matter to someone who actually feels the pain? Last year, somehow word got out in school as a rumor, and the rumor was supported by the way she dresses herself from neck to toe leaving only her face exposed.  
  
By then, Peeta had already had two relationships, and neither went well at all. They both complained that he wasn’t responsive enough, didn’t seem like he was much interested in them enough. The honest truth was that he wasn’t because he couldn’t be. How could he make a connection with them when he couldn’t feel their hand in his or a kiss to his cheek or lips? How could he explain not being able to orgasm when they insisted on wrapping their hands or mouths around his cock?  
  
So when their mutual best friend Delly, suggested that they talk to each other, they found that their Troubles fit perfectly. Peeta couldn’t feel the effects of Madge’s Trouble and Madge wasn’t looking for more than what he could give. It was what Peeta had always hoped for since he was six, that first day of school when his father pointed to Katniss and Gale Everdeen and said, “You see that girl and boy there?”  
  
Six year old Peeta squinted to see the boy and girl with dark brown hair and gray eyes. “Yes, Daddy.”  
  
“I was going to marry their mother, but she ran off with some out-of-towner”  
  
Peeta’s face scrunched at the thought. “Why would she do that when she could’ve had you, Daddy?” His father was a good man, after all, but even as he asked the question, he started to wonder if it could have been because of their Trouble.  
  
What his father told him, though, surprised him: “Because she was troubled too, but I think his Trouble made her feel better about her Trouble.”  
  
The idea fascinated him from then on. If you could find someone who makes your Trouble better, just a little bit more bearable, then that was wonderful. Wasn’t it? He thought so, until his relationship with Madge. Their Troubles worked together, but his life wasn’t better for it. They were more like friends with benefits, where the benefits were more on her side than his.  
  
He could get it up, but it took effort and there was never any release for him. There was never anything for him really.  
  
So that little bit of hope he carried with him since he was six died a little with every date he had with Madge.

* * *

Peeta slides a tray out of the oven carefully. Over the years, his father’s taught him tips and tricks of how to work with the oven without being able to feel the heat. He watches how red his skin gets as an indication of whether he’s too close or has been standing near it for too long.  
  
Once he and the tray are well away from what he has memorized as the heat radius of the oven, he begins to think of other things, including his date with Madge in a couple of hours. Just before he places the tray on the table, someone knocks on their side door.  
  
It could be Delly, but then again, it could be Katniss Everdeen. It’s Saturday and she often comes by to trade on Saturdays. The very thought makes him rush to the door because he’s never home when she comes by, always at Madge’s.  
  
Sure enough, he opens the door to reveal Katniss with her older brother, Gale, standing behind her. “We have two squirrels,” she says to Peeta while her brother says nothing but scowls at him.  
  
They’re healthy-looking, a far cry from where they were six years ago when all of the Everdeens had sunken cheeks and desperate eyes. He remembers in excruciating detail how dull and lifeless Katniss’s olive skin and dark hair had been, then. She and her brother would walk their little sister to school, but none of them carried sacks for lunch. They were so thin, he was sure that if starvation didn’t get them, illnesses they’d be too weak to fend off without proper nutrition would in the cold winter months.  
  
That's why, six years ago when he’d just turned ten and found a desperate Katniss rummaging through trash cans in town, he’d risked his mother’s wrath and his own skin. Two loaves of breakfast bread dropped directly into the fire. Those loaves held the last of any nuts they had in inventory and the shipment to replenish their stock had been delayed for over a week.  The favored bread peacekeepers were willing to buy at a ridiculously high price, and they were going to be the last two loaves for a while.  
  
In his mother’s anger, her Trouble created a whirlwind of baking equipment around the room. In the end, Peeta paid for the two loaves with first degree burns on his hands and a swollen knot on the side of his head. He hadn’t regretted it, not for a moment, especially when he watched Katniss run off with the loaves pressed tightly to her body in the cold rain, when he watched her and her family fill out again with plump cheeks.  
  
“Two squirrels?” she says again, but this time it sounds more like a question while shaking her game bag in front of Peeta to remind him that she’s still in front of him.  
  
It takes only a moment to recover. “My father’s visiting a friend, but I can handle the trade,” he tells her eagerly and to his horror watches as her face scrunches. His insecurities bubble to the surface. Can she tell he’s troubled just by looking him? And by the look on her face, she’s repulsed by it. This was the very reason why he never gathered up the courage to talk to her, because who would want a troubled person? Those without troubles try to avoid those cursed by them.  
  
There have even been decades when angry, frightened groups work themselves into a mob intent on purging the town of all troubled people, violently. Many died over the years, but they never purged all troubled people. Obviously. The town calls them Cleansings.  
  
“Do you smell something burning?” she asks, sniffing the air. He suddenly takes in a whiff of something burning now that she mentions it. He looks down and notices that he’d forgotten the tray he was carrying. The edge has been held close to his chest for who knows how long. He has no idea how bad this burn will be.  
  
Peeta drops the tray on the table and in the corner of the kitchen with his back to the Everdeens, lifts up his shirt. It’s not as bad as it could have been. There’s some blistering, but it won’t require a doctor.  
  
Katniss is next to him in a heartbeat and blinks at him before rummaging through her bag. It takes a while for her to find what she’s looking for, but in the next instant, she’s holding a shallow glass jar. “It was supposed to be for the smith, but I think you could use it,” she says, twisting off the lid and scooping a dollop of the salve with her fingers. Before he has time to really understand what’s going on, her fingers are gliding over his skin with the creamy balm.  
  
And that’s when he realizes that it’s creamy. He can feel it. He can feel the searing hot pain where the burn is, but then it cools with every gentle pass of her fingers covered in the balm. Everywhere she touches, he feels…everything. His eyes widen at the sensations of the cool air of the room, the warmth of her fingers and her breath as she concentrates on the area.  
  
All he can see is the trail of her fingers on him until they freeze in place. He looks up to find her staring at him with her brows furrowed in a question he can’t answer. She’s about to withdraw her hand from him, and his reaction is automatic. He holds her hand in place at the wrist with the singular thought in his mind that he wants more. He hasn’t felt anything for ten years and he can’t let go of it.  
  
It’s her turn for her eyes to widen.  
  
“Get your hands off my sister!” Gale Everdeen demands and it’s enough to shock Peeta back to his senses. He releases her, but it takes a few seconds for her to move away.  
  
“We’ll come back when you’re father’s around for trade,” Gale mutters gruffly, ushering Katniss out the door with his hand on her shoulder, then closing it behind them. Not that Peeta could have shown them out. He stares at the burn where he not only felt something for the first time since he was six, but it was Katniss Everdeen’s touch. Finally able to turn his head away from his chest, he notices the shallow glass jar of burn salve on the table.

* * *

Madge is moaning again with her hands on her breasts and her hips rocking and circling his over his. This is her favorite position because his ability to measure how much force to use is never to her satisfaction. This way, she can decide how fast and how hard she wants him to penetrate her.  
  
While she pleasures herself with his body, his mind wanders back to when the Everdeens came by the bakery for a trade. How healthy Katniss looked, with her plump cheeks and radiant olive skin. It’s inevitable that he then thinks of her fingers on him.  
  
For the last ten years, he’s been starving for a sensation, any sensation, and there was Katniss to throw her own kind of bread for him to hold onto, for him to survive on. Feeling someone’s touch was enough of a high, but feeling that touch from Katniss was more than he could take. It felt as though the world had tilted and the nerves of his body fired all at once from a long sleep. It felt like—  
  
“Fuck, Peeta!” Madge cries out, but it’s not her usual from an orgasm. This is different, and before he can open his eyes, she’s already off of him, sitting beside him on her knees with her fingers between her legs. “Fucking shit, Peeta!”  
  
He can’t help but stare at her fingers coated and glistening with something. Was that from him?  
  
“You should thank your lucky stars I’m on the pill,” she growls as she slides off the bed and stalks off to the bathroom.  
  
Looking down his body, his cock is as flaccid as before they started and still dribbling liquid. He’d never ejaculated before, not even in his sleep.  
  
Madge doesn’t return until after the sound of the shower ends. “What’s gotten into you?” she asks him with a towel wrapped around her body.  
  
“Nothing,” he says simply, because he’s not ready to share what had happened with Katniss earlier.

* * *

He’s still hungry for more, for just one more touch from Katniss Everdeen.  
  
In school, when she drops her book outside of the classroom, Peeta is there to pick it up in the hopes of having her finger, any finger, graze one of his. When her finger lightly connects with his, the usually dead nerves of that specific patch of skin fire off. He can only stare at where she touched him when she turns and enters the classroom.  
  
It’s not enough.  
  
For their next class, he convinces Delly to switch seats with him so that he sits in back of Katniss. Her one braid hangs low around her neck and over her shoulder. He can’t help himself. His entire body is focused on the gleam of her braid and he reaches for it. The pad of his point finger follows the twists and turns of the braid until he catches Delly looking at him with an appalled expression on her face. That’s enough to sober him, pull him back to his senses…but not for long.  
  
Before the doors to the yard open for lunch, he squeezes his way through the crowd so that he can stand next to her. He knows when the doors open, people practically stampede out, causing everyone to bottleneck and squeeze together. When it works out the way he expects with her shoulder pressed firmly against his for almost a full half a minute, he knows it will never be enough.  
  
So he follows her through the yard and around the school building. A hand juts out behind a wall and grabs him by the shirt, pulling him up against the bricks. Katniss’s forearm presses firmly at his throat. “Why does it seem like you’re being trying to touch me?”  
  
For the first time, there’s no gentleness from her touch and he winces at the pain, but also it shakes him. It’s the first time he realizes he’s gone too far. He’s been creepy, stalking her the way he has, like some predator, and the only way to make amends is to come clean, even if it means the possibility of having the whole school know.  
  
“I’m troubled,” he sighs out the confession.  
  
It’s enough to ease Katniss’s forearm a little from his throat.  
  
“I can’t feel anything. Haven't since I was six,” he says and Katniss looks between her forearm and his face, as though wondering why he winced.    
  
“Except you,” he explains.  
  
“Except me?” She releases him completely.  
  
He feels a tap on his shoulder and the moment he turns his head to investigate the new sensation, something hurdling towards his face blocks out everything. His eyes are closed, but there’s a throb around his right eye that fades into nothingness. He opens his eyes, but his right eye doesn’t focus well.  
  
“Stay away from my sister, Mellark!” Gale shouts down at him. He wasn’t even aware he’d fallen.  
  
“Peeta!” calls out a familiar voice, and Madge is standing there next to Gale, pulling her glove off of her left hand. She’s angry, angrier than he’s ever seen her. “You have no right to hurt him!” she says right before taking hold of Gale’s arm with her bare hand.  
  
The eldest Everdeen doesn’t flinch. The only acknowledgment that he’s even aware of Madge is when he looks down to where she’s holding him. He doesn’t seem at all concerned by her, removing her hand from his arm.  
  
“Come on, Katniss,” her brother says before ushering her away by the shoulder like he did in the bakery.  
  
“What’s going on?” Madge whispers the question, blinking at her hand, then at the Everdeens disappearing into the din of the schoolyard.  
   
“I don’t know, but I think they’re troubled too.”

* * *

After school, he was supposed to meet up with Madge at her house, but both agreed that they needed time to process what had happened, alone.  
  
Sitting at the table with a cup of cold-brewed tea, there’s a knock at the door.  
  
It’s Katniss looking sheepishly at him before tilting her head in the direction of his backyard.  
  
Without a word, he follows her to the old apple tree where she sits on its exposed root. He joins her and tries to wait to know why she’s come, but is careful not to touch her. He’d learned his lesson about giving in to his selfish need to feel something.  
  
He can’t wait for her to speak first. “So, you and your brother are troubled, huh?” he asks carefully. Subjects like this are spoken in hushed voices, in private settings.  
  
“No,” she sighs out. He looks up at her, wondering what she’s trying to pull. Sure, there have been people throughout the generations that have denied having a Trouble. No one wants to be troubled, but when someone else witnesses the evidence, it’s hard to deny.  
  
“Gale and I are immune.”  
  
That was new. He’d never heard of immunity from a Trouble before. He’s not completely sure he believes her.  
  
“The closer our proximity to a Trouble, the more we cancel it out…only when it comes to us.” She lowers her head to watch her fingers twiddle on her lap. “I didn’t know you were troubled.”  
  
Peeta blows out his breath to take it all in. Being able to cancel out a Trouble is groundbreaking news even it’s only with a couple of people. It’s something that would send the entire town in free fall. The troubled would be seeking the Everdeens out at ever turn and the untroubled would never believe that the ability’s not a trouble. The news could even start another Cleansing.  
  
“You shouldn’t tell people about that.”  
  
There’s an instant scowl on her face. “I’m not telling people. I’m telling you.”  
  
His brows lift up at that and her expression softens. “I’m only telling you because you risked so much telling me about your Trouble.”  
  
And without warning, her hand slips into his. “You haven’t felt anything since you were six?”  
  
“Nothing,” he breathes, mesmerized by their joined hands.  
  
“And you feel this?”  
  
“Yes,” he sighs in absolute pleasure. Their eyes meet for a moment before hers turns away, but her hand remains in his.  
  
It hits him then and there what his father told him about Katniss’s parents: “I think his Trouble made her feel better about her Trouble.” Katniss, Gale, and perhaps even the youngest Everdeen, Primrose, must have inherited their immunity from their father.  
  
When she looks up at him shyly and leans in for a kiss to his cheek that he feels every bit of, he knows for sure that he’s a goner.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is roughly based on Syfy's Haven.
> 
> Disclaimers: I own nothing of the original Hunger Games or Haven content. Everything else is mine.
> 
> There's a grocery store chain called Publix that sells a bread called "breakfast bread". Whenever I eat it, I think of the bread Peeta gave Katniss, so that's why I used it.


End file.
